August 19, 2019

The Tech Landscape #115 🧸

The Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi was a World War II Japanese kamikaze plane planned to be used in the event of the invasion of Japan. It was very cheap and aimed to be mass-produced at a rate of 8,000 per month. The atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant none ever flew in combat.

15 stories this week, but the two to really pay attention to are Alexa the smart home controller, and Instagram the augmented reality platform.

Assistants & Voice

Alexa-powered devices can now communicate with many more gadgets, games, and toys after the release of Custom Interfaces to developers. This is, I think, a very big announcement; Custom Interfaces unlock a whole new range of applications for Alexa and clearly indicates Amazon’s ambitions for the future.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/ca2cfbfb-37a2-49de-840c-f06f6ad8b74d/introducing-custom-interfaces-enabling-developers-to-build-dynamic-gadgets-games-and-smart-toys-with-alexa

Natwest is trialling a service to access banking through Google Assistant. Users will initially only be able to get information, not make transactions, and will need to authenticate with a specially-created password.
theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/12/hey-google-lend-me-a-tenner-natwest-trials-voice-banking

Google Assistant users can now assign reminders to other people in their Family Group or who are connected to the same Home device. Useful for, e.g. “remind Ana to buy toilet paper”.
blog.google/products/assistant/stay-organized-and-productive-new-assignable-reminders/

XR / Immersive

Instagram has opened up its augmented reality effects platform to all creators, so anyone can publish an effect using Spark AR. This is the second big announcement; Instagram is now the best platform to get AR experiences into the hands of many users.
tech.fb.com/creativity-for-all-facebooks-spark-ar-now-lets-anyone-build-and-share-effects-on-instagram/

Snap(chat) announced the latest version of its Spectacles, which now include twin HD cameras to capture 3D images which can later be augmented with dedicated Lenses. It’s another baby step towards full AR glasses.
snap.com/en-US/news/post/introducing-spectacles-3/

YouTube’s virtual cosmetics try-on feature has launched with a partnership with MAC. The feature was initially announced back in June.
techcrunch.com/2019/08/15/youtubes-new-ar-feature-lets-you-virtually-try-on-makeup-while-watching-videos/

Social

Twitter announced a raft of upcoming changes, including subscriptions to topics of interest, topic muting, and auto-generated lists.
theverge.com/2019/8/13/20804476/twitter-interests-follow-topics-feature-accounts-timeline

Facebook is simplifying its privacy levels for Groups, removing the “closed” and “secret” labels and allowing only a choice between “public” or “private”.
newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/08/groups-privacy-settings/

Content

Automattic, the owners of the WordPress CMS, have agreed to buy Tumblr for a fee reported to be below £3 million—much less than the £910 million its current owner, Verizon, paid.
theverge.com/2019/8/12/20802639/tumblr-verizon-sold-wordpress-blogging-yahoo-adult-content

Instagram will reportedly soon use the same fact-checking program as Facebook. Posts flagged as false by independent checkers won’t be deleted, but will be removed from hashtag and Discover feeds.
poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/you-can-now-report-a-suspicious-instagram-post-and-expect-a-certified-fact-checker-to-verify-it/

Everything Else

IKEA announced that its Home Smart division, which (obviously) makes smart home devices, will receive ‘significant’ investment and be spun out into its own business unit.
newsroom.inter.ikea.com/news/all/ikea-invests-heavily-in-the-smart-home-going-forward/s/211c6cbc-6db5-4c5b-bb52-391741fca4c1

Shopify has launched its own web-based messaging tool, Shopify Chat, for its ~800,000 business users and their customers.
venturebeat.com/2019/08/14/shopify-launches-web-chat-for-merchant-and-customers/

Owners of phones running Android 7.0 and above can now (or will soon be able to) log in to their Google accounts using their fingerprint or screen unlock instead of a password. To which I say: good, death to passwords.
theverge.com/2019/8/12/20801954/google-passwords-chrome-fido2-webauthn-fingerprint-biometrics-screen-lock

Spotify has made its analytics dashboard generally available to podcasters. It’s spent a lot on podcasting this year, so this is a tool to make its platform more attractive to creators.
theverge.com/2019/8/13/20802018/spotify-for-podcasters-dashboard-live-beta-analytics

Chinese news aggregator site Toutiao has launched a web search tool to take on incumbent Baidu. Like all other search tools in China—including Bing—it will censor results.
techcrunch.com/2019/08/11/bytedance-launches-a-new-search-portal-that-returns-a-mix-of-results-from-the-web-and-its-own-platforms/